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To some people, life is unfair. To some, life is good. And to others, life is great. It all depends on your perspective and how much responsibility you take for your personal development and income.

But regardless of how we see life, we all want the same thing – to live each moment to the fullest. It doesn’t matter if you are the richest person alive or the poorest. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the happiest person on earth or the saddest, we all want to enjoy life to the fullest.

The problem is – there are some things hindering us from this goal that our mind is hiding from us. It might be difficult to discover these things on your own, but if you don’t just want to exit, but also live; if you don’t just want to survive, but also thrive, you must get rid of these things.

Today we will examine the 7 things that are preventing you from living each moment to the fullest and how to break free from them:

1. Trying to Please Everyone

There are many reasons this is futile. The dominant one is that you’ll never be happy being someone else because you’ll put yourself under immense pressure trying to pull it off. And when it’s all been said and done, you still won’t be able to please everybody because different people want different things for you. The question is – what do you want for yourself?

The second reason is even worse for life-changing decisions like career, business, or marriage. The people you’re trying to please won’t suffer the consequences with you daily. They won’t be the ones going about with the burden of that poor decision. In fact, you might end up resenting them for the poor decisions you made to please them.

If you always try to please everyone, you will never, ever enjoy life to the fullest.

2. Waiting for Permission

If you think someone won’t give you their blessing to do what is really important to you, don’t go to them to ask for permission. Just do it anyway and apologize later if need be. If it is so important to you, then do it. You have to be bold enough to stand up for yourself.

“Do what makes YOU happy. Focus on what brings YOU joy. Appreciate and do more things that make YOU smile. Live your life for yourself. You matter! You count! You’re deserving of true happiness! This is YOUR life. Live it to the fullest! Live life with no regrets.” – Stephanie Lahart

3. Waiting for the Right Time

The problem with waiting for the right time is – it never comes. Weeks will pass, then months, and even years, and you will always find an excuse to procrastinate. Then you will regret not starting now.

The right time is now; when you have the motivation. Happiness isn’t something you can find, you have to create it. And if you do that, years will pass by and you would be happy that you started now.

Sure it might not go as expected, but as Mark Twain Said, “Twenty years from now, you will be disappointed more by the things you didn’t do than by the things you do.”

4. Comparing Yourself to Others

The danger of comparing yourself to others is that you might think you’re doing so well that you’ll relax too much. Or you might find out that the people you’re comparing yourself to are miles ahead of you and you might get discouraged. 

Sure, you should be competing with someone; but that person isn’t your someone else rather than the person you were yesterday. As long as you do better today than you did yesterday, and you do that every day, you are already successful. 

“A flower does not think of competing to the flower next to it, it just blooms.” – Zen Shin

5. Taking Self-Education Lightly

A wise man, Jim Rohn, once said, “formal education will make you a living. Self-education will make you a fortune.” and there’s a lot of truth in that.

They don’t teach you the concept of lifestyle design for absolute freedom in school. You can only learn that by reading books (or listening to audiobooks) like the 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss.

In school, they don’t teach you the life-changing concept of goal setting. But you can learn from books like Goals! By Brian Tracy; that shows you how to achieve everything you want faster than you ever thought possible. Let’s say you wanted to start a YouTube channel that motivates others: you’d need to be educating yourself on your audience, learning how to design thumbnails, and figuring out the ins and outs of video production. Although this would take time, the benefits could massively outweigh the waiting game.

Your parents might not teach you how to achieve financial freedom (maybe they aren’t financially independent themselves); but you can learn something like that in Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki.

The point is, it doesn’t matter whether you are a doctor who also wants to do better; a businessman who wants to get ahead faster; or a person who just wants to live happier, there are blogs, books, podcasts, and other things out there that can save you years of hard work and learning the hard way.

As the popular saying goes, knowledge is power.

6. Being Afraid of Failure

Many people are afraid of failure because they think it’s a bad thing. But failure gives you experience, which they say, is the best teacher. It teaches you everything you need to succeed. Plus, you can use Tim Ferriss’ fear setting to master it. 

You can also avoid failure easily if you love self-education – aka learning from history. And finally, you can overcome it if you are willing to live with the possibility of failure and you plan to learn from it to become smarter.

7. Missing out on the Benefits of Meditation

Some people think they don’t have time for meditation. But given the fact that it literally increases focus and attention, reduces stress, preserves the aging brain, physically changes the brain structure for the better, reduces anxiety and depression, helps overcome addictions, and has a bunch of other benefits; I think it is safe to say that you don’t have the time not to meditate.

And Don’t Forget to do This

Define what success means to you. To some people, it means becoming rich and living the billionaire lifestyle. Some people just want to climb to the top of the corporate ladder, have a wonderful family, and live happily ever after. Some people would love to join or create their own NGO to achieve a higher purpose.

But all that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you know exactly what it is you want to do with your life. You need to define success in your own terms. What does success mean to you? Use your answer to devise a plan to make it happen.

It will make your life a lot easier and your decision making swift every time. So the next time you have a big decision to make, you can ask yourself, does it take me closer to my goal? Or farther from it?

What activity makes you enjoy your life to the fullest? Share your thoughts with us below!